Food: A Cultural Culinary History

Scope:

T

his course explores the history of how humans have produced,
cooked, and consumed food—from the earliest hunting-and-gathering
societies to the present. This course examines how civilizations and
their foodways have been shaped by geography, native fl ora and fauna, and
technological innovations. Feeding people has always been the primary
concern of our species, and more than any other factor, fi nding, growing, and
trading food products has been the prime catalyst in human history. Think,
for example, how the desire for spices in the Middle Ages led directly to the
discovery of the New World.

The scope of this course is global, covering civilizations of Asia, America,
Africa, and Europe and how cultures in each of these continents domesticated
unique staples that literally enabled these civilizations to expand and fl ourish.
The course also covers marginalized and colonized cultures that were
dominated largely to feed or entice the palates of the great. A major theme
of the course is the process of globalization, imperialism, and the growth of
capitalist enterprise at the cost of indigenous cultures and traditional farming
practices and how these processes were shaped by trade in food.

Beyond the larger economic and social issues, the course will also cover the
culture of food, why humans made the food choices they have, and what
their food practices tell us about them and their world. In other words, food
practices will be used as a window for viewing culture as a whole—just as
one might study painting or literature. Foodways reveal much more because
not only must all humans eat, but they also all make conscious choices about
food within a cultural milieu. These choices not only reveal who they are
and where they fi t in socially, but also often their political, religious, and
philosophical bend. By exploring what humans have thought and written
about food, you will hopefully be able to experience human history as it
becomes alive and direct in a way that the stories of great kings and epic
battles sometimes cannot.